Customer Reviews

Bluetooth Pccard Adapter

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I picked up this unit for my laptop when I got a bluetooth phone. My goal was to use bluetooth and Activesync to keep my contacts updated on my MPX220. Getting this to work took quite a bit of playing around with the settings, COM ports, etc.. but I finally got it to work. I checked with other people's experiences and it seems like this is the best product for XP users since the XP drivers are included with the unit. The other products (3com, Belkin, etc) had lots of problems. The XP drivers for Belkin are particularly bad.

The other benefit of this card is its low profile when using with a laptop. The retractable antenna & LED stick out about 1/4 inch from my IBM Thinkpad laptop. BTW, I never had to actually pull the retractable antenna out to get signal. It works fine in the embedded position. This was a key point for me since I didnt want to have to plug/unplug a dongle into my laptop every time I move it. I simply slip the laptop into its case with the PCMCIA card embedded in it. Hope this review helps you out. If you have any questions, check the message boards at howardforums or post a question with your review here. I'll do the best I can to help out.

I've got two or three different USB bluetooth dongles, and they do okay. But this card is the best. I like it because I can leave it in my laptop, and as long as I don't need the pcmcia slot for something else, it is like adding built-in bluetooth. Dongles stick out and can get broken off, and you have to find it and put it on each time, then take it back off and pack it away every time you put your laptop in its case. The only disadvantages are the normal and expected hit on the laptop's battery life, which might not be much but a class II bluetooth dongle must surely have an advantage there. And the blue flashing light is excessively bright for me. If left on at night, you'd think there's a police car outside your window. But if you often take your laptop out at charbucks or whatever to connect to the Internet through your bluetooth cell phone, it is nice to have bluetooth always installed and ready when the laptop powers up. You can finally go to the airport and leave your dongle at home!

I planned to buy a laptop computer with a built-in bluetooth adapter. Due to many reasons I had to look for an external one. USB adapets are way too big and I usually use all the USB plugs. Since I don't use the PC Card slot at all I decided a Bluetooth PC Card should do the job. This one did more than what I was looking for: Really long range (unlike the other brands that just write some random range on the cover, best of all, never even had to use the attached antenna); small (can hardly see it); and fast.

It works perfectly with Windows XP SP2 (the one I'm currently using), no flaws whatsoever. The only drawback is the flashing blue light. It's fine with me as it is not that bright anyway, but sometimes people say it's annoying.

I used the adapter to connect my VAIO with many devices, from cell phones to headsets to other computers. In short, I highly recommend this product.

It was easy to install and was recognized by my Treo immediately with very few configuration problems

I bought this unit to expand the capabilities of my TabletPC (which isn't offered with a Bluetooth option, believe it or not) and am quite satisfied with the buy. The card extends 1/4 inch or 6mm beyond the edge of my tablet and I haven't needed to deploy the antenna for anything, yet.

However, be sure to download the latest drivers - especially if you intend to use Bluetooth keyboards/mice.

It seems low power because it didn't change my battery drain rate in a noticable way, however I would have liked it to be powered off when I disable the bluetooth stack on my computer ... it just sits there blinking the blue LED no matter what the state is .. which seems a little wasteful.

I purchsed this card because I wanted a solution that would allow me to have a wireless mouse without a dongle that could snap off a USB port. It also was to provide the ability to use a GPs, bluetooth headphones and syncing my Dell Axim.

well the mouse worked fine, however the card does not support the necessary technology to use the headphones and I couldnt get the axim to sync

ultimatly i sold the card on ebay because it couldnt work with the headphone, now keep in mind this isnt a headset. these were sterio headphone for music.

the clencher was when i called zoom and they said they would call me back with a solution. I never heard anything.

Due to poor custmer service and a product that is incapable of accomplishing my goal I had no choice but to get rid of it. I picked up a generic one at frys that was a CF card with a PCMCIA adapter that was very expensive that got the job done.

I just purchased this Bluetooth pcmcia card, the mouse works after a clean boot but when turned off it will not reconnect when turned back on. I am using Windows stack, seems like everybody had trouble with the OEM stack that comes with it. Anybody have this issue?

I bought this card hoping to wirelessly sync calendar/contacts with my Treo, and to use it to connect my laptop to use the Treo's broadband (EVDO) network. At first I tried using the Bluetooth stack from on the mfr provided CD, which didn't work. I then tried uninstalling that and using the Bluetooth support built into Windows XP. I got the network connectivity to work barely (three ping responses and then got the error message "general failure") just once - couldn't get that to work reliably. And I could not get anything to work with Palm OS sync (apparently other reviewers have had success with Microsoft ActiveSync but I don't have a Windows-based Treo). Finally, trying to sync caused my Treo to crash. That's a PalmOS problem not a Zoom problem, but it made the card useless to me. I returned it, and now just plug my Treo in via USB.

I have an IBM Thinkpad T42, so this review should be qualified by the fact that any computer makes use of different drivers, but my computer is no more than 3 months old and yet the drivers for this device caused innumerable problems, and essentially the bluetooth did not function. This may be a good product for some, but it's far from a sure thing.